Taking pride

Sept. 10, 2013

To the Editor:

I read the letter from Mary Alice Traeder (“Happy to live in Harvard,” Sept. 3) about how proud she is in her town of Harvard.

We moved here from Chicago. It will be 10 years April 1, 2014, since we moved here. I had some relatives who were a little skeptical about how we would adjust to a small town and how the people in the town would accept us. Well, we have no regrets. We have had the pleasure of meeting so many wonderful people here in Harvard.

Harvard is everything that Traeder described. If you want to be a doubting Thomas, then you can look at some of the downsides of this, and any other town like it, and, yes, there are some problems, but none that cannot be dealt with.

I, somehow, became the head of three neighborhood organizations when I lived in Chicago because the neighborhood was on the downward swing. We, the residents of the neighborhood, took pride in the area we lived in, and the neighborhood did come back. It took a lot of hard work, but we did it. It took pride. That’s not a big word, but it is so important.

I salute Mary Alice Traeder and her husband for being involved and for their pride in their hometown.